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Forum:51: A Woman with No Name
The party decided that they would make good on Karl Lexington's request and find out who Marie Waters, or Leona, truly was. Their investigation first took them to a local records office, where the officers on duty, recognizing their saviours, offered their assistance in locating any personnel records on a Leona from several years prior. They found a small number of women with that name, but more notably, a few people of unknown name including a girl who was deliberately left unnamed at the request of her parents. They learned that this girl was a ward of the city of Terceira, as both her parents had died when she was young. They were both Baihu temple custodians, where the father, Miguel, was a head priest, and the mother, Laticia, was a healer. Laticia had apparently been murdered by Lordinian mercenaries who sought to bring her back to Lordin, as she was reportedly an escaped slave. Miguel died shortly after avenging his wife's death, as he managed to kill the Lordinians, as well as several local paladins sent to stop him, with his bare hands before succumbing to injury. They brought this information to their fellow in the church of Baihu, Hector Carson, only to find that a number of people were also awaiting his invitation into the temple to worship Baihu for the first time in a while. On entry, they found Carson preparing a sermon in his hidden basement, and on revealing the identity of the killer and her suspected family, the priest had a long and hearty laugh. He went on to reveal that Miguel was his mentor and the man responsible for the recordkeeping basement in the temple, and taught him the values of survival and keeping the written word despite Baihu's lack of language. Laticia had escaped to Terceira seeking protection, but thrived within the church as a healer and won Miguel's affections, and they dedicated their daughter to Baihu by refusing to give her a name, as Baihu does not use words. When they died, she was taken in by Dona Leiria followers who maligned her as a demon child, and prevented Carson from seeing her and returning her to Baihu's church. He suspected that the Monsignor would have known more, as he was responsible for overseeing the orphanage at the time. Before leaving, the group asked about a stone against which martyrs bled, and Carson offered the group the stones underneath the church floorboards, as numerous martyrs to Baihu's cause bled and died within the temple in wartime. The group retrieved the stone, hoping it would fulfill the requirement for the blade that would cut through fate. Before they left, one of the paladins who had initially come to arrest Carson, herself named Paula, returned, offering to re-dedicate herself as a paladin of Baihu. This gave the party hope for the future of the church, but some pause when they considered the root cause being motivated by fear of death. The follow-up investigation went to the Church of Dona Leiria, where they found the Monsignor kept a number of personal journals that told the rest of the story. When she was taken in, the young girl had already begun following the tenets and ideals of her parents, and refused to accept a name. A disciplinarian nun, Sister Melinda, at her school insisted upon giving her the name Leona, but the girl refused to answer to it. Things came to a head when Sister Melinda, at her patience's end with the girl, decided to exact corporal punishment, but was overtaken by the girl's already considerable martial arts instincts and brutally killed. The girl even stopped the other children in the room from trying to intervene, saying that the kill was rightfully hers. Thereafter, she was kept away from others and left in the care of the future Monsignor, who wrote about how her glare filled him with fear, and that in wartime she would disappear for long periods and return with bloodstained hands and teeth. He also saw an orc matching Yahtuh's description at this time, and was concerned they were possessed by demons. However, after a time he seemed to grow more at ease, as he noted her fearsome eyes were stymied by simple eyeglasses, and that her demeanor seemed to improve. This was not meant to be, however, as when she left, he apparently became convinced that her true nature had simply concealed itself and that he had unleashed a monster into the world. He then became obsessed with trying to rescue the girl, or else stop the demon inside her, and Yahtuh was noted as another possible victim of this obsession. Thereafter, the record stopped, and it is assumed that she had left for Librem. Stories and weapons in hand, the group briefly met Vega the legendary blacksmith to talk about the blade to cut fate, and she heartily approved of the weapon and whetstone that the group had picked for the task. She then set about instructing Lin in the method of sharpening, explaining that it would take an iron will that could face death to sharpen the blade. She demanded a demonstration of this from Lin by asking her if she could grasp Baihu's Fang by the blade, and in doing so Lin drew close to death but survived with a mere gash on her hand. Vega explained that the act of drawing Baihu's Fang against the Saint's stone would be significantly more taxing, and that it could only be done at the moment she desired to cut fate. According to Vega, once the blade is sharpened, the act of drawing it through the air for a single stroke would be akin to dragging a normal blade across a rocky beach for a hundred years, and so it would lose its sharpness almost instantly. Therefore, the cut could only be taken once, and only if the chance of hitting the target is assured. Armed with this knowledge, Lin noted that she only needed to train to the point that she could challenge the Seven Sainted Beasts, and her former mentor, before proceeding onward. The group then prepared for a return to Librem at Ritter's behest, as he was going to deliver his report on what had transpired in Terceira, and perhaps against his better judgement, confront Edith Harper one more time... Rewards for last session are as follows: 2000 XP for contributing to the mystery of the Woman With No Name The Saint's Stone, upon which martyrs to Baihu bled and whose nature will contribute to the creation of the blade that cuts through fate.